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What national debate?

As bloggers, we spend most of our time responding to daily events, so there isn’t always time to sit back and think about the overall state of things. That may be just as well, since the overall state of things is, actually, rather troublesome.

I found running for office unenjoyable because there seemed to an excessive focus on fundraising, a high degree of partisanship, and little real debate on the issues. If one reads the pages of a local newspaper, or for that matter this site, none of these seems to have gotten much better in the past few months, and some of them, notably the excessive partisanship, have probably gotten worse.

The nature of discourse is a particular source of frustration. To be fair, there are occasional writers and commentators who think things through and add important insights. But most people seem to have their mind made up before they start. If it’s a Democrat, Obama will be doing fine, and those who disagree will be racists, wingnuts, or something worse. If it’s a Republican, Obama will be a socialist, incompetent, and probably contributing his ill-deserved Nobel Prize to ACORN for more vote-stealing.

Words that I would discourage in an eleven-year old—stupid, insane, ridiculous—flow off pens and keyboards with abandon.

There seems to be a sense that all this is entertainment, that America remains strong enough that it can afford a dysfunctional political system without serious consequences. I think this confidence may be exaggerated. Four people were killed in Afghanistan this week while the local news media were filled with balloon hoaxes, football scores, and Chris Christie’s weight (Pennsylvania will have its turn next year). These sort of things tends to catch up with you, and I am afraid it is catching up with us already.

October 19, 2009 at 8:00 am

--Michael Livingston

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